Motor homes, and other vehicles having frame rails, can provide a portable living space for allowing people to travel in comfort. For extended trips, it can often be desirable to have several extra personal items such as suitcases, food, tools, generators, or a number of other items. However, it may be inconvenient to store these extra items in the living space and many motor homes do not provide adequate storage space outside of the living space. Further, motor homes typically include several onboard systems, such as electrical, waste, water and fuel systems, which have multiple components that require storage space. If most or all of the only available storage space outside of the living space is being used for the onboard systems, little space would be available for the storage of personal items. Some chassis manufacturers have attempted to accommodate the need for storage space in motor homes in various ways.
According to some approaches, known motor home chassis include variations on a central support section of the chassis with “outrigger” storage space which is on either side of the central support section under the living area (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,921,615 or 5,314,205. However, because these “outrigger” sections are not directly supported by the chassis, they can have limits on the amount of weight that they can support. Even if the outrigger sections are supported, having a central support section with “outrigger” storage space limits the size of the storage space by only allowing a storage compartment to be half as wide as the motor home, rather than allowing the storage compartment to encompass the entire width of the motor home.
Additionally, some conventional motor home chassis have frame rails that gradually transition downward into a dropped rail section used for supporting a storage space. These gradual transitions, which are typically radiused, can detract from the total available storage space.